Helsinki Homicide: Vengeance

by Jarkko Sipila

  “Tööstuse 52,” Suhonen snapped and the driver stepped on the gas.

  The windshield wipers were going at full tilt. The sky was dark gray and the flags on the ships were fully unfurled, snapping in the wind.

  * * *

  Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki was sitting at his computer at Pasila Police Headquarters when Sergeant Joutsamo stepped into his office. Heavy raindrops battered at the windows.

  “Well?” Takamäki said in a friendly tone, looking up from his monitor. He was wearing a white shirt and navy tie. A gray blazer hung behind the desk from a screw in a bookshelf that had been deliberately loosened. Forty-five-year-old Takamäki had short brown hair, sharp features and taut cheeks, highlighted by a muscular jaw. His piercing blue eyes straddled a handsome nose.

  “That welder’s suicide case is ready for your sign-off. The case is closed. I’ll file the paperwork.” Joutsamo offered Takamäki a stack of papers.

  All deaths that occurred outside of hospitals or similar institutions became police investigations. The starting point was simple: the death was a homicide until proven otherwise. That’s what the police had done here.

  The lieutenant remembered the case. Twenty-four-year-old Pekka Kyllönen had been fired at the end of his workday, but had wanted to work late to finish a job. The boss had told him he wouldn’t be paid overtime, but that hadn’t bothered Kyllönen. In the morning, the young welder had been found hanging from a rope in the shop. Nothing indicated a homicide and a handwriting analysis proved the suicide note was written by Kyllönen.

  “No home, no job, no woman, no life,” read the note stuffed into the breast pocket of his overalls.

  Not a master of literature, but he had known how to summarize. Joutsamo had combed through his background, albeit briefly. Kyllönen had dropped out of high school first, then vocational school to pursue professional hockey. But at seventeen years old, his promising career had ended with a knee injury, and he wound up in a series of dead-end jobs. He had lived with his alcoholic father, who disclosed that Kyllönen’s girlfriend had dumped him a month earlier. The job loss was the final blow.

  Takamäki took the papers and scribbled his signature on them. The cause of death had been established. From this point onward, Pekka Kyllönen was just another number in the dismal suicide statistics. Autumn brought plenty of stories like this one to Helsinki.

  The case was closed. Takamäki felt no sorrow, but wondered why Kyllönen had wanted to finish the job he’d been working on. Maybe the guy just wanted to accomplish something.

  Earlier in his career, suicides had bothered him more, and the lieutenant had tried to think of ways of preventing them. Now, however, they were just numbers to him. Annually, about a thousand people took their own lives in Helsinki. Society seemed to have no interest in determining why and journalists were unable to cover the stories since the files for suicides were sealed.

  Suicide brought shame to family members, often because they hadn’t done much—if anything at all—to prevent it. Secrecy helped cover up the shame.

  Joutsamo took back the papers. “I’ll file these.”

  Takamäki nodded. He could’ve said something, but there was no need. Every case that went through the Helsinki VCU was tragic. Clichés had no place among professionals. What was said to family members and the public was a different matter.

  “Listen,” Joutsamo began.

  “What now?”

  “Suhonen went to Tallinn.”

  “What about it?” Takamäki had signed off on the trip after seeing Suhonen’s photo of Gonzales and “buzz cut”. A day trip cost only twenty euros.

  “Well…”

  “Do you have a problem with it?”

  “Right, well… Routine cases are piling up here and Suhonen is off chasing ghosts. Far as I’m concerned that’s the surveillance group’s job.”

  Takamäki looked sharply at the sergeant. “Really.”

  “I think we need another detective in lieu of Suhonen.”

  “We need about twenty more detectives for all of the VCU. But we’ll get none. If I transferred him to the surveillance group, we wouldn’t get anyone to replace him.”

  Joutsamo shifted her weight to the other foot. “There are just too many cases. We need help.”

  “Listen, Anna,” Takamäki said. “It makes no sense to squander Suhonen on paperwork. He’s much more useful when something bigger is brewing.”

  “Yes, I know that. But this so-called paperwork is burying us. We really need help.”

  “Well, we won’t get any. Keep prioritizing. Focus on the major cases—same process. In other words: in, over and out on the stack. Forget craft, just nail the bad guys.”

  “Right, of course. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Shitty job…” Takamäki began.

  Joutsamo finished his sentence, “…but why did you go to the Police Academy?”

  * * *

  Suhonen was in the back seat of a taxi, watching out the rain-streaked window as Tallinn’s Old Town hurtled past. Though Estonia’s capital was a hot tourist destination in the summer, on a day like today, its charming buildings, restaurants and shops were devoid of tourist crowds. Only a few locals were about. After about ten minutes, the Nissan slowed to a stop in front of a white limestone building. The sign read: Estonian Central Police.

  Suhonen paid and sprinted to the entrance to avoid the rain. Somebody had been monitoring his arrival through a surveillance camera, as the lock was buzzed open immediately upon pressing the doorbell.

  The hallway was cramped. Though the building was the former home of a local insurance company, it seemed to have been designed for the Estonian Central Police. At the beginning of the millennium, the ECP had still operated out of the old KGB building in Old Town.

  Suhonen was quickly cleared through the security checkpoint, since his Glock was in the bottom drawer of his desk back in Pasila—the Helsinki police didn’t allow weapons to be carried abroad.

  A dark-haired woman in her thirties checked Suhonen’s badge from behind the bulletproof glass and nodded. Suhonen tried to make small talk in his elementary Estonian, but she didn’t respond, just picked up the phone and gestured for Suhonen to wait in the small foyer. The phone call was brief and soon a second young woman—blonde this time—came through the doors and gestured for Suhonen to follow. No Finnish officer would come to work in a skirt above the knee, Suhonen thought.

  White walls lined the narrow staircase. The blonde led the way and Suhonen followed her legs to the third floor.

  The matter could certainly have been handled over the phone or by email, but Suhonen preferred face-to-face meetings. Tallinn was only a short boat ride away, and besides, he’d get to see Marju. Suhonen had met the brunette the previous spring. He had been in Tallinn, shopping for parts for his motorcycle. Thirty-year-old Marju had been in the same store at the same time looking for a clutch plate for her Enfield. The possibility that her bike was the British classic had caught his attention, but it turned out to be an Indian knock-off. They had continued the conversation, and ended up at an outdoor cafe for coffee. Since then, they had met two or three times a month in either Tallinn or Helsinki.

  The meeting with Toomas Indres would take an hour at the most, and then he’d have time for dinner with Marju. He had a ticket for the nine o’clock ship back to Helsinki.

  The skirt directed Suhonen into a huge, modern conference room. “Have some coffee. Toomas will be in shortly,” she said in Finnish with a slight accent.

  The long conference table could seat twenty people. The walls were aquamarine and the carpet a dark tone. The tall windows were dressed with floor-to-ceiling vertical blinds. Police crests from various countries, which had been given as gifts, decorated the walls. Among them was a plaque from the Helsinki VCU.

  Before Suhonen could pour his coffee, Toomas Indres glided into the room.

  “Hi,” Indres said in Finnish, hurrying over to shake Suhonen’s hand.


  “Hello,” Suhonen answered in Estonian. The man’s handshake was intense.

  Indres, the head of intelligence for the Estonian Central Police, was ten years Suhonen’s junior. Young leaders were not unusual in Estonia. The head of the entire ECP was only thirty-two years old. In post-Soviet times, the ECP was known for quickly promoting young, able agents in order to sever ties with the old Soviet system. Indres wore a pair of black jeans, a white T-shirt and a light blue blazer. His hair was blond and closely cropped.

  “How are you? Still swimming?” Suhonen asked. He recalled that Toomas was an open-water swimming enthusiast, and had logged some long distances.

  “Heh, yeah. Next summer about ten friends and I plan to swim from Tallinn to Helsinki. It’ll be good practice, just in case the Ruskies take their tanks across the border someday.”

  Suhonen chuckled, though he suspected Indres was only half-joking, at least in his hatred toward the Russians. The Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1988 had carved deep wounds into the Estonian psyche. Rather than watching Soviet propaganda, many Estonians had watched Finnish TV, which easily carried over the Gulf of Finland. As a result, and because Finnish and Estonian were closely related languages, most Estonians were nearly fluent in Finnish.

  “What about you guys?” Indres asked, gesturing for Suhonen to sit across the table. He poured the coffees.

  “What about us… The big-wigs have grand plans and even grander visions. But despite them, we still solve our cases.”

  “Hear you there. You had some photograph?”

  Suhonen dug two folded letter-size printouts out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket. It was his best photo from the Velodrome; one of the images was the original, the other a close-up of Gonzales and the unknown man.

  Suhonen set the printouts in front of Indres and pointed to Gonzales. “This one I know, but who’s this other guy?”

  Indres looked at the photos for a moment. “What’s this about?”

  Suhonen chuckled to himself, but not aloud. This is how it always went with these intelligence types. Nothing was free. Everyone wanted to know more about the case.

  “This is Mike Gonzales…”

  “A foreigner?” Indres cut in.

  “Nope,” Suhonen shook his head. “A homeboy. Formerly Mika Konttinen.”

  “OK. Go ahead,” Indres said, tasting his coffee.

  Suhonen did the same before continuing. “So, this Gonzales-Konttinen is a pretty well-known black market operator. Construction fraud and such. That in itself doesn’t interest us, but lately he’s been hanging around with the Skulls. And the day before yesterday I snapped these photos of him with buzz cut here.”

  “Gonzales is under surveillance then.”

  “Nope. Just a coincidence.”

  Indres laughed. “Good police work calls for coincidences. Do you have an open investigation on this Gonzales?”

  “No. Just gathering intel.”

  “But there’s something interesting about him?”

  Suhonen thought for a second. “Isn’t it enough that the guy is a con-man, hangs out with real bad guys and drives a BMW sports car?”

  “Sure. That’s plenty. Especially the Beamer. Nobody with that car could be a good person.”

  Indres, Suhonen knew, rode a Harley in the summer months.

  “So you know him?” Suhonen asked. He was beginning to tire of the prying.

  “A Russian is a Russian, even if he’s fried in butter,” Indres said dryly.

  “Though in this case it’s one of our own homegrown Estonian-Russians. The man’s name is Sergei Zubrov. Lives in Tallinn. A good year ago, Zubrov was involved in a big cocaine trafficking operation, but never ended up in court.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “We haven’t been tracking him,” Indres said, shrugging.

  “So he hasn’t been involved?”

  “You think he’s doing some business with this Gonzales?”

  “It’s a possibility, at least.”

  Indres nodded. “I can look into it a little further. It’s easier to track the Russians than our own outlaws. The Russians still have traditional hierarchical organizations where each man has his own role. Our local hoodlums have shifted to more of a project-based model where the group comes together for one specific gig, and when it’s completed, the team breaks up. We really don’t have any pure drug or theft gangs anymore. Each gang member works and gets paid on a job-by-job basis. It’s pretty damn difficult to keep up on who’s dancing with who.”

  Suhonen poured himself another cup of coffee.

  The men chatted for nearly an hour before Suhonen announced that he had to leave.

  THURSDAY,

  OCTOBER 22

  CHAPTER 4

  THURSDAY, 8:30 A.M.

  VANTAA PRISON, VANTAA

  Tapani Larsson was marching along a concrete walk through the prison yard, headed toward the perimeter wall and the main gate. His pace was brisk and the pot-bellied guard struggled to keep up. Last night’s rain had dwindled into a light drizzle.

  Larsson’s tattoos rose from beneath the collar of his leather jacket, reaching toward his bald head. Winding around his neck were a snake, a naked woman and an eagle. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes hard and piercing.

  Larsson was fuming, but less so today than over the last year and a half. The man’s hand continually closed into a fist and reopened again. Hand, fist. Hand, fist. Larsson, the Skulls’ second-in-command, had served most of his sentence in Turku’s new prison in Saramäki. In accordance with standard procedure, he was to be released from the prison nearest his home. The Helsinki Prison was full, so the pen in suburban Vantaa got the job. Larsson couldn’t care less which institution’s door slammed shut behind his back, as long as he was on the outside.

  The prison guards at Vantaa would have rather kept the violently unpredictable man longer, but the Court of Appeals had shortened his extortion sentence from three-and-a-half years to sixteen months. Today marked the end of Larsson’s term.

  Larsson’s last three months in the Turku Prison had been spent in the maximum security ward. He had wondered about the decision, but somehow the warden had been convinced that Larsson had been orchestrating criminal activity from within the prison walls.

  The maximum security ward was no Papillon, but it wasn’t far off. An hour a day outdoors, a miserable weight room and all visits conducted behind thick plexiglass. The purpose of maximum security was to try to soften up the inmate. Try harder, Larsson had thought. Captivity had only made him more defiant.

  Government oversight of the maximum security ward essentially consisted of an assistant parliamentary ombudsman visiting once a year to make sure the flowers were watered.

  Larsson spit on the wet prison lawn. Not to protest, just to spit.

  The previous day, he had been transported from Turku on the prisoner train and had slept the night in a Vantaa cell. Wake-up call was at 6:30, breakfast 7:00 sharp. At 8:00, he turned in his prison duds and signed for his civilian clothes: boxers, a dark green T-shirt, white sport socks, combat boots, camouflage pants and a black leather jacket. His other belongings—a radio, books, shaver and toothbrush—were in his duffel bag. He had given his tube of toothpaste to a friend in the Turku pen.

  After receiving his civilian clothes, Larsson was given a Certificate of Release verifying that he had served his time. The guard had cautioned him not to lose it—the police database wasn’t updated immediately, so in the interim, Larsson would be considered a fugitive without the certificate.

  Next stop was the teller. Some inmates had earned thousands of euros by working, but Larsson hadn’t been interested in that. He signed for eight euros, all that was left in his prison account. Prisoners weren’t allowed to carry cash, so all transactions in the cafeteria were paid electronically.

  Larsson reached the checkpoint in the perimeter wall. Beside it was a large metal gate for cars and trucks. The guard in the booth pressed a button and the lock on the
interior door buzzed.

  Larsson yanked the door open. Freedom was less than five yards away. On the left was a plexiglass booth and directly in front of him, a metal detector. The guard almost made a crack, but then bit his tongue. “Papers,” he said dryly.

  Larsson said nothing, just dug the certificate out of his pocket and handed it to the guard. His escort had stepped aside to wait by the door.

  The guard examined the document and pushed a second button. The exterior door was now open. Larsson took his certificate, folded it back into his pocket and left without a word.

  Once he was outside the walls, the guard in the booth looked at Larsson’s escort. “So... You think he’s been reformed?”

  * * *

  Suhonen lay on the bed of his Kallio apartment. Two minutes ago, his clock radio had kicked off the day. For some reason, he had tuned it to Radio Suomipop, and at 8:30 sharp, the morning DJ had played a classic Finnish hit “Adult Woman.” Before that, he had joked about condoms that were tough enough to be passed from father to son.

  Suhonen listened to the tired Finnish pop song, unable to summon the energy to get up and change the station.

  “All that we share, together we bear,” the singer crooned over the airwaves.

  His trip to Tallinn had been worthwhile. Toomas had revealed an important name, even if Suhonen didn’t know why Sergei Zubrov was in Finland yet. Today he would dig. Maybe the Narcotics guys would know something about the man.

  Dinner with Marju had been enjoyable. Just for fun, they had decided to dine at one of the tourist restaurants in Old Town. After strolling hand in hand down the cobblestone streets, Suhonen and Marju had settled on the Olde Hansa Restaurant, where the wait staff was dressed in medieval garb and served beer in ceramic steins. Ordinarily, Suhonen wasn’t fond of the tourist traps, but then it had felt good. If he only could’ve stayed the night. Rocky seas had made the return trip less than pleasant, but Suhonen had napped in his chair the entire trip.